USC School of Medicine Greenville welcomes charter class

July
31, 2012

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Three years ago, when the University of South
Carolina and the Greenville Health System (GHS) were discussing plans for a
new medical school in the Upstate, USC President Harris Pastides issued a
challenge to “make this medical school different and special.”

USC and GHS took a giant step in fulfilling that promise when they welcomed the charter class of the new USC School of
Medicine Greenville, located on the campus of GHS’s Greenville Memorial
Hospital.

Dr. Jerry Youkey, the dean of USC School of Medicine Greenville, said
the vision of the new medical school is to create a different type of
physician capable of leading and participating in the transformation of
America’s health care delivery system. “We coined the phrase ‘A new
school of thought’ as it reflects our commitment to preparing doctors
who will connect with communities, patients, colleagues and technology
in new, more progressive ways,” Youkey said.

The new medical school is the first in South Carolina’s Upstate. It
joins the USC School of Medicine in Columbia and the Medical University
of South Carolina in Charleston.

According to Pastides, the USC School of Medicine Greenville comes at a
critical juncture for the state and nation. The United States is in the
midst of a growing physician shortage, and with an aging population and
millions of Americans expected to receive health insurance as a result
of healthcare reform, the current delivery system will have to change to
meet demand. The nation also must add capacity to educate and train
physicians.

“You don’t have to go any further than news headlines to see that we
need more qualified doctors and we need them quickly. This is
particularly true in South Carolina, where nearly every county has too
few primary care doctors and some specialties like neurology are in
critically low supply. Not increasing our capacity to educate the next
generation of physicians is, quite simply, not an option. We must do it
now,” Pastides said.

Looking at the new medical school’s admissions numbers, there is pent-up
demand for medical education in South Carolina. Some 1,445 people
applied for admission, nearly 300 interviews were conducted and 53 were
accepted. Seventy-seven percent of those accepted are from South
Carolina. The male-to-female ratio is nearly evenly split, with 28 women
and 25 men. The charter class includes eight under-represented
minorities (African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans). Plans
call to increase enrollment to 100 first-year students by 2015.

Students at the new medical school will receive clinical training across
their four years of medical school, breaking from traditional
curriculums that have two years of lecture followed by two years of
clinical training. Clinical training will take place at the Greenville
Hospital System, the 13th largest in the country, and include
educational experiences in its state-of-the art simulation center and
its simulated patient care center.

In addition, the medical school requires its students to become
certified emergency medical technicians (EMT), a process that will
occupy their first six weeks of medical school. USC School of Medicine
Greenville is one of only a two in the country to require 200 hours of
EMT training. (The other is Hofstra University.) Youkey explained that
the experience will instill students with basic medical skills, teach
them to work as part of a healthcare team and expose them to the living
and working environments of patients.

“Patients don’t live in textbooks,” Youkey said. “Patients are people in
our community whose circumstances are widely different. Future
physicians must become ever more prepared to adapt how they care for
people in accord with patient-specific needs.”

The new medical school also seeks to “hard wire” students for an
increasingly IT-dependent healthcare delivery system. The students will
learn to leverage the Internet and enablers such as tablets and smart
phone to access patient records, order prescriptions and tests, and
research the latest treatments. The students will train alongside
pharmacy and nursing (CRNA) students, an approach that fosters
collaboration and recognizes no one person or profession has all of the
answers. Better communication between caregivers and between caregivers
and patients will ultimately lead to better patient care and better
outcomes.

And that, Youkey said, is the ultimate goal of the USC School of Medicine Greenville.

About the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville
The University of South Carolina (USC) School of Medicine-Greenville is a
four-year medical program developed as a partnership between the
University of South Carolina (USC) and the Greenville Health System
(GHS). Since 1991, GHS has provided clinical education to third and
fourth-year medical students of the USC School of Medicine Columbia. In
2009, the decision was made to expand to a four-year medical school. The
USC School of Medicine Greenville achieved preliminary accreditation
from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) in 2011 and
welcomed its charter class in July 2012. Learn more at
greenvillemed.sc.edu.

About the University of South Carolina
Founded in 1801, the University of South Carolina (USC) is a public
research university with eight campuses across the state. USC has more
than 300 programs of study leading to bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral
degrees from 14 degree-granting colleges and schools. As South
Carolina’s leading educator, annual enrollment exceeds 45,000 students.
USC is one of only 40 public universities to receive the Carnegie
Foundation’s top-tier research designation and community engagement
designation and receives recognition for its prestigious South Carolina
Honors College and undergraduate and graduate International Business
programs. Learn more at sc.edu.

About Greenville Health System

Greenville Health System (GHS) is
committed to medical excellence enhanced by research and education and
is accredited by The Joint Commission. It offers patients a
sophisticated network of expertise and technologies through its five
medical campuses, tertiary medical center, research and education
facilities, community hospitals, physician practices (University Medical
Group) and numerous specialty facilities in upstate South Carolina. The
1,268-bed system is home to 14 medical residency and fellowship
programs and the state’s largest number of active clinical research
trials (613.) For the fourth consecutive year, its flagship Greenville
Memorial Hospital has been ranked among the nation’s top 50 hospitals in
a specialty area in U.S. News & World Report’s 2012-13 publication
of America’s Best Hospitals. GHS is home to the University of South
Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. Learn more at ghs.org.

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